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Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

You hang onto that dream, laddie ;)


Boomers are only making the 2021 housing crisis worse​

  • Boomers have more real-estate wealth than any other generation, according to a NYT analysis of Fed data.
  • Unlike previous generations, many of them aren't listing their houses for sale as they get older.
  • It's exacerbating a historic housing shortage that's made it difficult for millennials to buy homes.
The Boomers aren't all at fault. Housing construction has shifted from accommodating those starting out in the market. There are few if any lower priced units/rentals coming onto the market. We have tens of thousands of immigrants cueing up for the same units as our graduating youth; driving up the prices. Those immigrants group together to purchase a unit so one house is occupied by a large extended family with a large number of incomes to cover the mortgage. Its not just two incomes but 4 or 5 and we haven't been able to adjust to this new reality. I am not advocating for less immigration but rather immigration needs to go hand in hand with housing development and job creation in the industrial sector and that means being competitive globally. Energy costs are destroying that competitiveness.
 
its the reason I am very strict on controlling my 9 year old's access too and time on screens. Its also the reason she spends all summer with us at the camper; and in the woods, swimming and fishing in a cat fish filled pond.
Thank you so so much! Too many parents don't get how serious this is.
 
The Boomers aren't all at fault. Housing construction has shifted from accommodating those starting out in the market. There are few if any lower priced units/rentals coming onto the market. We have tens of thousands of immigrants cueing up for the same units as our graduating youth; driving up the prices. Those immigrants group together to purchase a unit so one house is occupied by a large extended family with a large number of incomes to cover the mortgage. Its not just two incomes but 4 or 5 and we haven't been able to adjust to this new reality. I am not advocating for less immigration but rather immigration needs to go hand in hand with housing development and job creation in the industrial sector and that means being competitive globally. Energy costs are destroying that competitiveness.
Why build a standard apartment/condo building with more affordable rents, when for a bit more initial outlay you can build "luxury" units and charge a lot more for rent?
 
That's a question for you. You used the term capped, not me. Are you happy and content ? Or do you feel you need or deserve more ?
Ah. Neither. Don't read into the word choice, just an empirical observation about what a given income/mortgage ratio yields (pre-rate increase), how that had changed to that point, and how it has changed since.
 
And it's a tough audience these days, apparently ;)

Why are young people so miserable?​


They tally lowest life-satisfaction scores among all age groups of those 18 and older in Harvard-led study, reversal of results of past surveys​


Twenty years ago, life satisfaction surveys of those 18 and older showed the highest readings among America’s younger and older adults, with those in between struggling with jobs, families, and other cares of middle life.

Now, a Harvard-led study examining a dozen measures of well-being show younger adults tallying the lowest scores of any age group. Tyler VanderWeele, director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science and senior author of the study, said the results reflect not just a longer-standing mental health crisis among younger Americans that predates and was worsened by the pandemic, but a broader crisis in which they perceive not just their mental but also their physical health, social connectedness, and other measures of flourishing as worse than other age groups.

VanderWeele, the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that should grab policymakers’ attention.


Stay off Tik Tok and Instagram - watching the fake world of those living the 'good life' by travelling everywhere, driving the high-end cars, wearing expensive clothes/watches, in the giant homes - its all fake and its having a mental toll on so many people in the 14-35yrs bracket. They see this stuff, in their face, day in and day out, 24/7 and they think - 'What am I doing wrong?' 'Why don't have I all of this stuff by the age of 30.' Its crazy and its mentally harming millions of people.
 
Why build a standard apartment/condo building with more affordable rents, when for a bit more initial outlay you can build "luxury" units and charge a lot more for rent?

And people will pay that "luxury" price. There is an over amplification of the importance of image these days, especially; but not specifically distinct to, our younger generations.
 
Ah. Neither. Don't read into the word choice, just an empirical observation about what a given income/mortgage ratio yields (pre-rate increase), how that had changed to that point, and how it has changed since.

Fair enough...

Interested GIF by reactionseditor
 
You hang onto that dream, laddie ;)


Boomers are only making the 2021 housing crisis worse​

  • Boomers have more real-estate wealth than any other generation, according to a NYT analysis of Fed data.
  • Unlike previous generations, many of them aren't listing their houses for sale as they get older.
  • It's exacerbating a historic housing shortage that's made it difficult for millennials to buy homes.
Stupid perspective. They bought a home and are still living in it, so they're guilty of keeping a home out of the market? Ageism rears its ugly head. The "historic housing shortage" is due to failure of governments to remove obstacles that hinder and discourage suppliers from building more stock.
 
I doubt the low-end and mid-range housing strategies can succeed as long as there are shortages for buyers in the higher bands. The instant policy makers try to solve a problem for income band "X", they create an opportunity for people in the next higher income band - also facing a shortage, or perhaps with a bunch of capital in hand to invest - to acquire something by outbidding the people in "X".

Start by saturating the high end. Most people moving into something are moving out of something, and most people try to improve their circumstances. Everyone who can move out of a mid-range unit into a higher-range unit frees up a mid-range unit.
 
Stay off Tik Tok and Instagram - watching the fake world of those living the 'good life' by travelling everywhere, driving the high-end cars, wearing expensive clothes/watches, in the giant homes - its all fake and its having a mental toll on so many people in the 14-35yrs bracket. They see this stuff, in their face, day in and day out, 24/7 and they think - 'What am I doing wrong?' 'Why don't have I all of this stuff by the age of 30.' Its crazy and its mentally harming millions of people.
You are so right. I don’t think a day goes by without my being reminded of both my parent and my in-laws who grew up during the depression years and came of age during WW2.

My father-in-law‘s mother was so destitute that when he was born (in Oshawa) she had no crib for him and had to put him in a dresser drawer to sleep. Growing up, he was constantly on the verge of starvation and sometimes stole food from vendors. When the war came along he signed up with the SDGs and got his first regular meals he ever had. Long afterwards, by the time I knew him, he would always gladly eat any food we put on his dinner plate and, if having corn on the cob, for example, he would not leave one single kernel uneaten. Indeed, he would frequently criticize us in a friendly way if he wasted anything, particularly food. He didn’t buy anything he considered unnecessarily luxurious. He believed in saving money for a rainy day.

Anyway, he was certainly not unique in his generation. There were millions of people who had gone through similar if not worse situations. Today’s generation(s) would do well to reflect on what others have gone through to get them where they are today.
 
You are so right. I don’t think a day goes by without my being reminded of both my parent and my in-laws who grew up during the depression years and came of age during WW2.

My father-in-law‘s mother was so destitute that when he was born (in Oshawa) she had no crib for him and had to put him in a dresser drawer to sleep. Growing up, he was constantly on the verge of starvation and sometimes stole food from vendors. When the war came along he signed up with the SDGs and got his first regular meals he ever had. Long afterwards, by the time I knew him, he would always gladly eat any food we put on his dinner plate and, if having corn on the cob, for example, he would not leave one single kernel uneaten. Indeed, he would frequently criticize us in a friendly way if he wasted anything, particularly food. He didn’t buy anything he considered unnecessarily luxurious. He believed in saving money for a rainy day.

Anyway, he was certainly not unique in his generation. There were millions of people who had gone through similar if not worse situations. Today’s generation(s) would do well to reflect on what others have gone through to get them where they are today.
I was in the process of writing a similar comment but you put it better than me.

Certainly this obsession over image is not entirely new. I think the timescale that boomers experienced is most representative of this change. The difference between my parents' lifestyle in their childhood versus what they raised me in is astonishing.

Yet, the change that zoomers are experiencing now is a paradigm shift unlike any other because they are not just recipients of information anymore, but actually get to "talk back to the (omnipresent) image box" (I remember being told my grandparents, for a time, used to dress up to watch TV...). And while "interacting with the world" sounds nice in theory, what it really means is being subjected to the most vile behavioral incentives.
 
You are so right. I don’t think a day goes by without my being reminded of both my parent and my in-laws who grew up during the depression years and came of age during WW2.

My father-in-law‘s mother was so destitute that when he was born (in Oshawa) she had no crib for him and had to put him in a dresser drawer to sleep. Growing up, he was constantly on the verge of starvation and sometimes stole food from vendors. When the war came along he signed up with the SDGs and got his first regular meals he ever had. Long afterwards, by the time I knew him, he would always gladly eat any food we put on his dinner plate and, if having corn on the cob, for example, he would not leave one single kernel uneaten. Indeed, he would frequently criticize us in a friendly way if he wasted anything, particularly food. He didn’t buy anything he considered unnecessarily luxurious. He believed in saving money for a rainy day.

Anyway, he was certainly not unique in his generation. There were millions of people who had gone through similar if not worse situations. Today’s generation(s) would do well to reflect on what others have gone through to get them where they are today.
Bingo and you have won the internet for today.

The Great Depression - the book by Pierre B - and the TV documentary "The Dust Bowl" should be required reading and viewing in HS and university.

That decade long event still shapes how many of us live.
 
Growth Boundaries (one of the drivers of unaffordable prices) (Reason.com)

We are not exempt.

"Vancouver, Canada, has nearly doubled its density within its already developed 1951 limits (unparalleled among the high-income world's central cities), and its suburbs are densifying. Yet the Vancouver market has become the least affordable in Canada and the United States, with a 13.3 median multiple. As Patrick Condon of the University of British Columbia concludes, "No amount of opening zoning or allowing for development will cause prices to go down.""

Work-from-home has the potential to relieve some stress, by allowing people to relocate. It would also help if city planners would stop trying to monopolize jobs (to protect their commercial tax bases) by competing for companies with subsidies. Obviously at some point in the past people spread out in Canada, and we should be doing it again.
 
There are only two things luxurious about many of them: the price and the sign on the advertising billboard
As someone who has lived in both "luxury" and non-luxury apartments over the years, I can assure you there is a difference.

Quartz countertops, ceramic tiles, dishwashers, in-suit laundry, etc., aren't standard features in most apartments. If you haven't paid for laundry by the load recently, you may not understand the "luxury" of not spending $5-6 per wash/dry.
 
As someone who has lived in both "luxury" and non-luxury apartments over the years, I can assure you there is a difference.

Quartz countertops, ceramic tiles, dishwashers, in-suit laundry, etc., aren't standard features in most apartments. If you haven't paid for laundry by the load recently, you may not understand the "luxury" of not spending $5-6 per wash/dry.

I know it's weird but I used to look forward to my Sunday afternoon laundromat trips. Good book and thermos of coffee. It was kind of zen... And believe it or not, not a bad place to meet people as a single guy...
 
war-time-homes-saskatoon.jpg


Welcome to the first home of the Baby Boomers - in Canada

war-time-home-in-saskatoon.jpg



My wife, number 7 of 11, was born into a house smaller than that - with two bedrooms and Mum and Dad (him of the RCNVR stoker service) taking in boarders and keeping a couple of chickens while he worked as a boilerman at the Sanitarium. Walking to work over the ice on the Saskatchewan.

Something to do with expectations, regulations and happiness.
 
war-time-homes-saskatoon.jpg


Welcome to the first home of the Baby Boomers - in Canada

war-time-home-in-saskatoon.jpg



My wife, number 7 of 11, was born into a house smaller than that - with two bedrooms and Mum and Dad (him of the RCNVR stoker service) taking in boarders and keeping a couple of chickens while he worked as a boilerman at the Sanitarium. Walking to work over the ice on the Saskatchewan.

Something to do with expectations, regulations and happiness.

Those are the spitting image of what we're in.
 
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